was exacted of the prelates and lay leaders, they required that when the oath on the holy sacrament was administered, the host should be consecrated by one of their own chaplains, the secret assurance being given to the conspirators, that, as the validity and efficacy of the sacraments depended entirely, according to the Romish doctrine, on the intention of the officiating priest, so the intention of the chaplain should be decidedly in their favour the wafer would be no host, and the oath a nullity! Such facts must be deliberately weighed, before statesmen can at all know their real position in dealing with the adherents of Rome.

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Such, it appears, however, was the general conduct of the hierarchy in Ireland, down to the time of the Reformation. "Few generations," says a learned historian, passed away, without the prelates adding some new grievance to the accumulation of national suffering; whilst for the turbulence which they uniformly evinced, they had as little aggression to plead in excuse, as, perhaps, was ever experienced by any community in so long a lapse of years. The sovereign, besides endowing them splendidly, had placed them next to, and scarcely below himself; and the aristocracy had enriched them with many noble benefactions, yet they were ever setting an example of that rapacious violence which was the prevailing vice of the times, fermenting disaffection, braving the executive government, stripping the law of its authority. One purpose appears to have animated the order; that of drawing to itself the domestic government of the country, and of establishing this dominion upon the trampled rights and pretensions of all other classes of men."

We will not now follow out the history of the Church as reformed in Ireland, its conflicts with the everrestless struggles of the Romish clergy, and the melancholy proofs which have for so long a time existed of the degeneracy of the Protestant Establishment through the selfish use of its patronage by the successive governors of the country. Sufficient has been said to point attention to a

very useful book on the subject, and to enable us at the same time to deduce from facts the true character of the Roman Catholic system. It is an opposition to the authority both of God and man. It is an opposition to the legitimate authority of man under the mere pretence of an especial authority from God. It is an artful system of contrariety to the written revelation of God's will, masked by an equally artful endeavour to withdraw the written word from the sight of men; and under the profession of defending them from distracting and overpowering light, to keep them in total darkness, to shut out meridian day by the deep-stained and storied windows of tradition, to merge the simple, grand, and elevating truths of the Gospel message in the mere scenic processions and pomps of a theatrical exhibition, frittering down the energies of the mind from the sanative contemplation of great moral truths, to the outside and beggarly service of vestment and posture, and ascetic and bodily infliction. A calm and impartial inspection of the system by the written word must end in this conclusion. And history, honestly read, leads us to the conviction, that the results are analogous to the moral aspect of the scheme. It is one of the infrangible truths of God's written code of government, that, as a man sows, so shall he reap; and they that sow to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption. If, therefore, men shall so pervert the message of sanctifying mercy, that it shall minister not to the spirit but to the flesh, then most unquestionably shall it become a carnal and a debasing influence on human nature, on individuals and communities. If the Romish perversion of Christianity be an opposition to the authority of God and man, it will ultimately develope itself in restless and seditious resistance both to divine and human law. This is, and must be, the direct fruit of the system; and what is the whole history of Ireland but a proof of this? Even while her Sovereign were Romanists, and the Romish Church exclusive and dominant, the priest, in the lordly exercise of his plastic power, and the

people, the moulded creature of his hand, ignorant, and unsubmissive to anything but priestly domination, were alike rebels against the sovereign. And ever since, so faras the repressed but tolerated Church has been able to maintain an influence in the land, that rebellion has continued skulking under the lawn of prelatic suavity, breaking forth into unbounded insolence in the "rollicking" parish priest, and streaming forth among the misled multitude, in the blood of midnight or mid-day murder.

This is no exaggeration. It flows inevitably from the system of contrariety to the sole divine rule of human conduct. The people are trained under a continual endeavour by the clergy to emancipate themselves from the control of human government, and to show their contempt for it; and they are consequently without regard or reverence for it-prepared, at any time, for any required act of disobedience. "As with the priest, so with the people." Nor need our observation be limited to the sister island. Over the whole continent, where Romanism prevails, the loyalty and morality of the people have no substantial principle. The French revolution was a full developement of the results to be expected in a series

of years. The morals of the people became grossly corrupt through the abstraction of the divine rule of conduct; the multitude, untaught in the renovating system of revealed truth, became infidel to man-the priests, as the usurping substitute for Godand, consequently, infidel to the unknown God, whose real character of holiness and mercy had been concealed from them; and at this moment, in every Roman Catholic state in Europe, instead of the existence of a healthy and moralizing loyalty, the government walks upon a scarcely hidden volcano, and the ear already vibrates to the rumbling of the threatened explosion. And in the end, doubtlessly, the nations will learn a fearful lesson: that if men will go on independently of God's infinitely wise and gracious plan, of governing the human mind, its progress and its interests, individually and collec

tively, by the rule of his almighty Spirit, through the written word, they will find the upshot to be wickedness, pollution, rebellion, and ruin.

But the tendencies of the Romish system may be fairly tested, by a comparison of the physical and moral aspect of the three countries-Ireland, England, and Scotland. The natural resources of all three are in favour of Ireland: the mineral treasures, the climate, and the soil, have an aggregate superiority. Scotland is in all these respects the least abundantly supplied; and yet we find prosperity, activity, and moral and intellectual worth, in proportion as we recede from Popery. The only anomaly in this statement, if it can fairly be called one, is, that in the north of Ireland the state of the people is vastly superior to that of the south; but there the Scottish presbyterian has been long settled; and that in several manufacturing towns of Scotland the dense population has been sadly demoralized and degraded, but every such spot teems with emigrant thousands of Irish Roman Catholics. Wherever the victims of the system gather, there its resultant evils prove manifest. Wherever a people under the influence of Scriptural truth throw off the incubus, they improve rapidly in the process of moralization. Is it not strange then, that while the nations of the continent are heaving in convulsive agony under a pressure felt to be intolerable, and while all the history of our own country, and of Ireland especially, shows forth the anti-social and anti-moral character of Popery, a strange infatuation should be eddying so many of our statesmen once more towards its vortex, and so many of our clergy are dallying and tampering with the fringes and furbelows of its robe? Under this strange influence, Romanism has been again established amongst us. All the experience of bygone years has been in vain; " still wonder after the beast," are still led by the cunning of that Jesuit association to whom the beast has given his power; and the result is, that we have no longer a Protestant constitu

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tion. One step of aggression after another has been gained; and now the Trojan horse is within the walls. This may have been permitted to humble and correct us. It certainly will be to afflict us. And it remains now to be seen, as time unfolds her misty curtain, whether the British churches shall shake all remaining

dust and defilement from their garments, and go forth from the wilderness leaning on their Beloved, or whether they will shrink back into the polluting and stifling embrace of the Romish Harlot, be identified with doomed Babylon, and perish with her in the coming crisis of her plagues.

WHEN the Clergy meet at a Visitation, and are to be addressed from the pulpit by one of the brethren, a custom has obtained which serves very greatly to take off the edge of a ministration that ought properly to avail" for doctrine, for reproof, and for instruction and correction in righteousness." The most recently appointed incumbent, and generally one of the youngest men, is called upon to preach, in circumstances unavoidably calculated to unnerve him for so solemn a duty, and to melt down the energies of his faithfulness into the inanities of common-place thought. This arrangement savours of bad, and, we hope, of almost bygone times. We conceive, that if a bishop has a strong sense of the vast importance of a clerical conclave, the momentous value of even one morning to some 50 or 60 ministers of Christ; if the shortness of life and of the ministry be rightly calculated, he would break through this shabby professional rule, and seek out the man best fitted in his turn to speak words of weighty monition, and of judicious and stimulating kindness. And if the clergy sufficiently regarded the solemnity of a ministry, which must be either "a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death," they would not be satisfied in looking forward, in a critical spirit, to the debut of the young Vicar of A., or the new Rector of B.; but they would unite in entreating that they might hear some known and venerated voice, saying "This is the way, walk ye in it. Instead of this it is, with many

honourable exceptions, too often the case that a Visitation Sermon is juvenile and tame, uninfluential and profitless. It sometimes, however, happens that the lot falls upon a man, though young, of too much seriousness of mind to look away, at such a time, from "the ministry he has received of the Lord," of too great singleness of eye to occupy it with anything else, and too much straitforwardness to go anywhere but directly to the points prominently before him. And in such a case, it is strange and sad to see the conviction, strongly manifest upon some faces, that the wise arrangement of appointing a junior has failed-that the young man has stepped intrusively out of his place that he has presumed to lecture his seniors, and that little or no thanks are due to him.

We are glad, therefore, that the recent Visitation Sermon of Mr. Bevan, of Burton Latimer, has appeared in print. He is evidently a man of the class alluded to; and if a production of the kind is likely to have incurred censure, it is well that we should see it, and judge whether there is any real ground for it; whether he has outstepped the legitimate bounds of a concio ad clerum, and violated, either in matter or in spirit, the proprieties of his position.

The sermon is plain and unartificial. It aims at no flights of eloquence or niceties of composition; but flows naturally from a serious though youthful mind. It might be thought that some of its statements

might have been a little diluted, or mixed up in a more bland and balmy vehicle, but it is a serious question after all, whether they would have been bettered; and whether the clergy are the men who should seek for such vehicula. It is hardly likely, when physicians take medicine, that they should condemn themselves to the large dilution of "four draughts" per day, for the sake of a few grains of active treatment. Surely if the clergy could receive in this appointed half-hour the concentrated essences of pastoral wisdom, in "thoughts that breathe and words that burn," it would be for their profit. There is, however, nothing improper or out of place in Mr. Bevan's discourse. It savours more of a meditation on his own sense of duty, than an attempt to admonish others a thinking over his own ministry, rather than a meddling with theirs and, evidently, anything in it bordering on the severe, savours really more of a correction honestly administered to himself, than to his brethren.

The two great features of the sermon, are the object of the ministry, and the conduct of the minister. As to the first, let it be remembered, aye, let it be a deeply cherished remembrance, as long as the distressing fact exists, that there is a division among the clergy-that there is an Evangelical, and that there is a Puseyite or Romanizing party-and that often indeed has the Visitation pulpit sounded forth the errors of the nonjurors or semi-Pelagian school; and the body of pastors who receive the 39 Articles in their "plain, literal and grammatical sense" have listened and turned homeward in sorrow-but in silence. It must not then be wondered at, if in these days of rising and rampant Popery-of Jesuitical assault both without and within our walls, men of what are called Evangelical, but which we would call reformation or Scriptural views, should mark somewhat distinctively the ground on which they stand. Nor must it be thought strange, if they who have been too readily charged with the neglect of moral instruction, as the criminal concomi

tant of high doctrine, but who have really, at the same time, been ever cavilled at for the needless rigidity of their habits, should protest against that over easy conformity to the prevailing recreations of less religious society, which so frequently characterizes the rubrical precisians of the day. It has been our lot to see sprucely cassocked incumbents of important parishes arguing across the dinner-table for the priestly power of renewing the soul of every infant brought to the font, and at the same time writing from the raceground their astonishment that any one could object to such rational and harmless amusements.

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The grand question is (and we, the reviewers, speak professionally), are we, or are we not, in earnest? Is it enough in fulfilling "the ministry we have received of the Lord," to go on the principle of the old proverb, "leta-be for let-a-be;" to merge in the common places of a good-natured neighbourly intercourse, all the conscientious differences of opinion which exist? It is impossible! In proportion as those differences are serious, they must mark and divide. A leading bookseller once said to a clergyman, "I am often astonished at the keenness of your controversial divisions. Why, we often quarrel most heartily with each other, but we always make it up again at the monthly dinner." Yes," said the clergyman, "naturally enough; your object is a mundane one, and the heart is readily healed by the energies of that very selfishness in which it originated. Our differences are often on vital points; and the warmth of the strife is a measure of the awfulness of the subject, and of the deep sincerity with which an opinion is maintained." In the main, this is true and, in the present instance, we see very little more than an honest endeavour, on the part of the preacher, rightly to occupy his position, and to preach the Gospel in its proportion, KATA την αναλογιαν της TIGTEWS, to those to whom, by his diocesan, he was appointed to preach it. There is an unequivocal simplicity and a considerable manliness in

what he has done, and we think that the meed of approbation should not be withheld, coming as it does come in these pages, from one utterly unconnected with the preacher.

It is here that some may take offence that some, sinking into lethargic indifference, may shrink from the sharp and rousing outcry of younger energy. But at what do they cavil? Is it at the doctrine of everlasting rewards and punishments? Is it at the value, the free forgiveness, or the conversion of an immortal soul? Is it at the recognition of "the moving of the Holy Ghost," as a fitting motive to the ministry? Is it the preference of purity of doctrine and practice to a mere legitimacy of successional ordination? Is it because of the open testimony for our reformation-doctrines against Romanizing encroachments? Is it because a young man, undera deep sense of the importance of his mission, has unhesitatingly, in a testing crisis, avowed his honest renunciation of recreations which might be snares to him, as they certainly are to many, and compromise his ministry among his parishioners, which in many other instances they most unquestionably do? Are there any so pertinacious and so testy, that in the face of the solemn vows and interests of the sacred calling, they can make no allowance for the honest warmth and sincerity of a seriously impressed mind? There may be some; but,

surely, they are, however unangelic, "few and far between ;" and we cannot doubt but that there are many who may differ in some respects from Mr. Bevan, but who, on a deliberate perusal of this little tract, will lay it down with a sigh, and say, "The man is evidently in earnest; and it would have been well for me, for my family and my parish, if a similar seriousness had commenced and continued to characterise my professional course. Let him go forward honestly striving, in a wicked world, to do what good he may, and in the meantime, the 'precious balm' of even a junior's reproof shall not break my head."

Time, time is flying. By and by, the delegated angel, bestriding the earth and the sea, shall lift up his hand and swear, by Him that liveth for ever and ever, that there shall be time no longer. Then the great Shepherd and Bishop of souls will meet and examine all his servants; and the decision of that awful scene will not turn upon professional etiquette and eloquent blandishments, but upon the question, whether the minister has "hid God's righteousness within his heart; or kept back his truth from the great congregation." It will be a mercy indeed in that day "to be found faithful." It will be a mercy to have written, and practically exemplified, this short, simple, and correct address.

WE have received, from an hitherto unknown correspondent, in comparatively humble life, a letter on the subject of Dr. Pepys' recent charge, as reported in the newspapers. It is a candid, and fair, and reasonable letter, accompanied with the name and station of the writer. We think it right to give publicity to a communication coming from such a quarter; because we think it shows, with the spread of general education, the growth of serious, intelligent thought OCTOBER-1845.

amongst the people, and will serve to show to the reckless clique of theological innovators that, wide spread in the less noticed ramifications of society-not merely among the aristocratical and flowering branches of the tree, but in those equally wide spread ing subterrene and radical fibres, which constitute its stability in the day of storm, and its nutriment and moisture in a day of drought-there is a sound and Scriptural theology, a living possession of the power of Pro

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